BitLife Royal Update Guide: Everything You Need to Know About the Royal Update

For close to two years, Candywriter’s BitLife has been immensely popular among iOS and Android gamers, and the game just keeps getting better. As it is, the company had a pretty good product for starters, but most succeeding updates introduced new features or built up on existing ones, thus offering players more and more ways to live their virtual lives. The latest of these patches happens to be something that you may have been anticipating for months — the Royal Update.

There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to the Royal Update, and we can understand why — Candywriter has been teasing it for quite a while, and players around the world have been clamoring to see it roll out, almost from the moment it was first confirmed as a future update. But we’ve done our share of testing and created our share of virtual royals, and have tested all of the new features and options that are mostly available in the Royalty sub-menu, which you will see under Activities.

So with that our of the way, this BitLife guide will focus on the Royal Update, as we shall now show you how to live your best — or worst — life as part of your chosen country’s royal family. (That is, assuming it has a real-life royal family!)

The Basics Of Royalty

Now that Candywriter has finally, after months of waiting, rolled out the Royal Update for BitLife, you may be wondering — just how do you become a royal anyway? Well, for starters, royalty is only an option in countries that have an actual, real-life kingdom or monarchy. if you don’t have God Mode enabled, chances are you’re going to start out as a mere Commoner when starting a new life, though there’s always a random chance you will be born to the king and queen of your country, thus giving you a chance to take over as king or queen once they die or abdicate.

Based on what we’ve seen, the countries where royalty is an option are as follows: Belgium, Denmark, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Monaco, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.

For obvious reasons, you cannot start a new life as a King or Queen (or Emperor/Empress in Japan), but those who have God Mode can start out as a Baron/Baroness, Viscount/Viscountess, Earl/Countess, Marquess/Marchioness, Duke/Duchess, or Prince/Princess in European countries. Prince/Princess are the only options in kingdoms/monarchies outside of Europe, such as the aforementioned Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Choosing Prince and Princess gives you a chance to eventually take over as King or Queen or Emperor or Empress, as we mentioned above. But since Dukes/Duchesses and other royals are far removed from the King and Queen in terms of succession, we’ve yet to play out a life where our non-Prince/Princess royal takes over as King or Queen. And that’s even if Respect is at 100 percent for several years running!

One key perk of being a royal is that you will always be born with lots of money in your bank account, as well as an annual “Royal Salary” based on your title. Additionally, this is a great way to quickly accumulate followers on social media, though based on our experience, posting any kind of content as a high-ranking royal will always result in a loss of followers! (Lower-ranked royals, however, can still gain a sizable social media following, endorse products, and post most kinds of content and enjoy positive effects.)

You will have several options available to you in the Royalty sub-menu under Activities, and that’s what we’re going to be getting into in the next few tips. All in all, the options are Abdicate, Celebrity, Execute, Honorific, Law Review, Public Disservice, and Public Service. Specifically, we’re going to discuss the latter three as we talk about the most important stat for every virtual royal in the BitLife universe — Respect.

Managing Your Respect – Keep It High If You Want To Be A Good Royal

Right below your four basic stats, you will see a fifth bar that designates your Respect as a royal, much like Fame determines how famous you are as a singer, actor, or any other type of BitLife celebrity. You can increase this stat organically by treating your loved ones right when you interact them and by doing good things in your day-to-day life, and this stat can likewise go down on its own once you hit on Age if you bully your classmates, talk back to your parents, or brawl with your siblings. But there isn’t any better way to get Respect up or down than by choosing the Public Service and Public Disservice options, respectively.

The option to choose Public Disservice or Service pops up once you turn 6, and that applies to all royalty ranks — whether you’re next in line to the throne or a comparatively lowly Marquess or Marchioness, you can carry out good or bad acts alike as a royal, with the former, of course, being far more recommendable if you’re trying to keep your Respect stat high and improve your chances of becoming the next ruler of your country.

Whether you’re visiting sick children at the hospital, donating millions for a charitable cause, helping clean up your local park, or even singing your country’s national anthem at a sporting event, these good deeds can improve Respect by at least a few points — there seems to be some internal logic that determines how many Respect points you can earn for a certain act of Public Service.

As for Public Disservice, this is the exact opposite of Public Service — here, you can do a variety of things if you want to abuse your power as a royal. Just what type of disservices can you do? Much like Public Service, the actions are random, but you may deny the existence of a global pandemic, reenact The Emperor’s New Clothes in public (and you should know how that story goes), create a monopoly that leaves your royal brand as the only one in the market, or give your incompetent friends some high-ranking government jobs.

Either way, these actions will cause public outrage, upon which you will be given a choice of apologizing for what you said/did or denouncing the criticism. You will also see a bar showing you how angry the people are over your act of Public Disservice — this determines how much Respect you will lose. Regardless whether you apologize or remain defiant, you WILL lose some Respect, and it won’t be easy to get that back immediately.

For Princes/Princesses and Kings/Queens, you can go to the Law Review option from the age of 6 onward and earn (or lose) Respect by supporting or denouncing whatever laws are up for review at a given time. Usually, there will be about one or two laws to review per year, and choosing whether to vote “aye” or “nay” on these laws would depend largely on common sense — for example, a proposed law banning second and third place trophies is best denounced, and that too applies to a proposed law that would supplement human teachers with robots.

As for acting in a “boomerly” manner, you’ll want to support that law — we tried it, and it caused our Respect to jump by a whopping 30 points! Most of the time, though, the Respect effects of approving or disapproving a proposed law would be completely neutral, and that often applies to those laws related to fashion choices.

Related: BitLife Careers Guide: How to Become a Financial Advisor, Physical Therapist, Professor, Pornographer, Chiropractor or a Chief Pilot

With that said, it is possible to regain lost respect in a few years and, in many cases, become even more respected than you ever were. Just keep doing acts of Public Service and choose wisely when approving laws. Having a royal marriage could also cause your Respect to jump, and so could taking over from your late father or mother as ruler of your country. But what happens if you completely lose Respect?

No Respect = Revolution

It probably won’t happen right away, but if you become King/Queen or Emperor/Empress and see your Respect dip down to zero for at least a few years, that brings up the possibility that the people of your country will organize a revolt and potentially overthrow you from power. In the dialog box for this scenario, you’ll see a bar designating how angry the people are, as well as three options to determine your next action — shall you apologize to the people, insult them, or quietly accept your fate?

Obviously, choosing the Apologize option is your best bet if you want to quell the revolt and return to the public’s good graces (eventually), though it’s not always assured that you’ll be forgiven by the people, especially if they were quite angry with your rule to begin with. Sometimes, they may be mad enough to demand that you be stripped off your power and fortune and exiled, but they may also force you to relinquish your royal status and fortune but allow you to stay in your home country. In rare cases, you may be forgiven enough to resume your rule as King/Queen or Emperor/Empress.

Accepting your fate is just that — you’re likely going to be overthrown and/or exiled to another country. And if you choose to insult your country’s people, that’s only going to increase your chances of getting exiled, which would likely be very high to begin with.

There doesn’t appear to be a designated timeframe between the time your Respect drops to zero and the time your people revolt. But just in case this may be required for a future challenge, we suggest executing as many people as possible, using Public Disservice as often as you could, appearing in commercials and photoshoots, endorsing products via social media, and bearing children out of wedlock — whatever ticks off the public, keep doing it until you see the Revolt dialog box pop up after you hit on the Age button!

In case you’re wondering, the Royal Update changelog does indeed state that you could get executed if you’re hated enough by the people. We’ve yet to experience this, despite numerous acts of public disservice and executions in certain playthroughs, so if you’ve been executed as a royal, we’d love to hear from you.

Executing, Punishing, And Imprisoning People – You Won’t Go To Jail, But The Public Won’t Like It

If you’re your country’s top royal, you will have one special option available to you — an option that doesn’t appear for other members of royalty in the BitLife universe. As you may have figured, we’re referring to the Execute option, which is essentially similar to the Murder option under Crime, except for a couple of things — one, the police won’t arrest you for carrying out an execution, and two, the methods of execution appear to be decidedly medieval in nature.

And there are quite a few choices available for any player who wants to be the BitLife equivalent of King Joffrey — you can burn your target at the stake, feed them to your hounds (Puppy Chow), have them swallow a sword, place them on a torture rack, stone them to death, or use a good old fashioned catapult like they did in the old days.

Above the drop-down box for execution methods, you’ll see another drop-down box where you can choose your victim — these may include family members, friends, exes, spouses of friends and exes, and random people. Regardless whom you choose to execute and regardless of the execution method you opt for, the outcome will generally be the same for the first 10 executions or so — these will result in public outrage and could result in a substantial loss of Respect. However, we’ve observed that once you’ve executed a certain number of people, the public will stop demanding an apology and making their outrage felt — they’ll essentially be so jaded at that point they wouldn’t bother to get angry. As such, you may space out your executions if you’re trying to trigger that Revolt scenario.

In addition, there may be some scenarios where people may do something that isn’t to your liking. It may be something as simple as calling you by the wrong honorific or the local tabloid writing a smear piece about you and/or your family, but if it’s something that could potentially anger you as a royal, you can either ignore, insult, punish/imprison, or execute, though other choices may also be available. Execute will only be available for Kings/Queens and Emperors/Empresses, but we believe you can use Punish or Imprison if you’re a lower-ranked royal and these scenarios take place.

Related: BitLife Social Media Update Guide: How to Become Internet Famous Through the All-New Social Media Update

Punishing, imprisoning, or executing someone, naturally, will result in public outrage in most cases, but we’re just leaving it out there — random scenarios can give you a chance to use your royal powers to introduce these people to your brand of justice! (Or injustice.)

Interacting With Celebrities As A Royal

As a member of your country’s royal family, your name will likely be known in and out of your country, and that means there’s a chance you’re going to be recognizable to the many celebrities that have been introduced into the BitLife universe. Whether you’re dealing with singers and rappers like Billie Eilish, Cardi B, and Post Malone, A-list actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, and Johnny Depp, athletes like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Shaquille O’Neal, and Conor McGregor, or any applicable Kardashian or Jenner, they will be available at random in the first drop-down box under Celebrity.

Just pick the famous person you want to hang out with, and choose one out of the multiple Activities that are available in the second drop-down box — these may vary depending on your age, but if you’re an adult Royal, some of the choices include playing video games, golf, or cards, going on a hot air balloon ride, taking part in a rap battle, attending a movie premiere, or even skinny dipping. You can start interacting with celebrities once you turn 14 years old.

If your Respect is low, meaning anywhere below 50 percent, the chances that the celebrity will accept your invite to hang will similarly be low. But if they accept your invite, you will then see a summary of how the activity went — you’ll see your enjoyment and their enjoyment levels, with red representing an unpleasant experience, orange representing mediocre, and green representing a pleasant one.

This is a good way to improve your Happiness stats, though you shouldn’t expect your Respect to increase just because you had a pretty fun arm-wrestling match with Chris Pratt or got into a Nerf Gun fight with Simon Cowell. Mostly, the celebrities seem to enjoy these activities, and with that in mind, we’ve yet to see what happens when a famous person ends up hating the time they spent hanging out with you.

Other Perks Of Being A Royal

From the moment you enter school as a royal, you will notice that things are more than a little different as opposed to those old playthroughs where you played as a commoner. For one, you will always end up in a private or all-boys’/all-girls’ school. It will be easier to make friends in school and easier to get away with shenanigans — even if your Headmaster or Principal is particularly strict, chances are they won’t kick you out if your behavior gets to be too much of a problem.

You may also get random scenarios where the teacher allows you to sit anywhere you wish in class, or you get complimented by a classmate just because you’ve got royal blood — as it is with the similar scenarios you may encounter as an adult royal, you can either Compliment them, Ignore them, Reward them, or Punish them. Rewarding these NPCs can help increase your Respect, while Punishing them decreases it.

Additionally, you’ll notice that even if your grades are bad, you can join sports teams and remain on them when your grades drop. Heck, even poor Athleticism isn’t a hindrance — if you want to play basketball for your school despite having a 20-inch vertical leap and a terrible, awkward shot, you’re automatically on the team if you’re a royal!

If you get arrested for a crime as a royal, you’ll see the option to use your influence in order to get the cops off your back. This is oftentimes quite effective, and we’ve noticed that using your influence to avoid an arrest doesn’t result in the people turning on you and getting outraged for your actions. (We presume the cops will also agree to keep the matter from leaking out to the tabloids!)

When it comes to marriage proposals, we’ve noticed that our partners automatically say “yes,” regardless whether there’s a ring involved or not, regardless of the location of the proposal. That means you can propose at the most awkward place and not have to splurge for a rather expensive, genuine ring and still have your partner accept!

We’ve gone through multiple playthroughs since the Royal Update rolled out, and we’ve never encountered a situation where people try to pick a fight on you. That means you won’t get bullied in school as often (see the tip below), and if you go clubbing as an adult, those ubiquitous scenarios where you bump into a dancer or customer or get insulted by them — oftentimes leading to a brawl — won’t pop up. You will, however, still be offered drinks and drugs at the club, so it is still possible to overdose or pick up a nasty habit while clubbing.

Having Kids Out Of Wedlock And Other Assorted Drawbacks Of Royalty

Unfortunately, there are also some additional drawbacks to being a royal — as an average Joe, you can get away with these things, but as Prince Joseph, you’ll have to be prepared for a great deal of public outrage. For instance, having a child out of wedlock is no big deal if you’re a commoner, but if you’re a royal, that’s going to scandalize your (presumably) conservative constituents, forcing you to either apologize for the scandal or remain defiant.

Either way, you’ll still lose some Respect in the process, so if you want to have kids as a royal, make sure you get married first! As we mentioned earlier, proposing to your significant other is a slam dunk if you’re a member of the royal family.

As a bonus tip, any children born out of wedlock will not have a royal title attached to their name.

The usual Fame options will be available to you as a royal, but regardless of the option you choose — books, commercials, photoshoots, or talk show appearances — that’s going to result in public backlash and the same old damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario where you have to choose between apologizing or standing your ground and lose respect either way. People, may it be the general public or the press, will invariably find it tone-deaf that a filthy rich royal is trying to earn extra money and gain extra attention by making endorsement money on the side, so it’s best to avoid the Fame options, regardless whether you’re the King or Queen/Emperor or Empress of your country or a low-ranked royal.

While we mentioned that bullying incidents won’t happen as often as they normally would if you’re a royal, there’s always the chance that you may get picked on by one of your classmates, who may, for instance, mock your royal family through a drawing. You will then have the option to insult, punish, ignore, or imprison your classmate — in this case, ignoring is the best option, as insulting may lead to a brawl and a subsequent loss of Health, while punishing or imprisoning might be seen as too harsh, thus costing you some Respect in the process.

Related: BitLife Politics Update Guide: How to Win Every Election and Become President

Lastly, take note that you cannot emigrate to another country while holding a royal title. You’re going to have to Abdicate in order to start a new life elsewhere — or get exiled after you’re overthrown from your position by the angry public, as we discussed in the Respect section.

Playing Across Multiple Generations – Who Takes Over After You Die Or Get Overthrown?

Although being King or Queen gives you power to do anything you please at any time and makes you virtually untouchable in the eyes of the law (if not the general public), there is one thing you can’t do in particular, and that’s live forever. So what happens once your character dies due to one reason or another?

Once you die while still in power, your oldest legitimate, royal son or daughter will automatically take over as your country’s top royal — it doesn’t matter if you had the child while you were still Prince or Princess, thus making them a Duke or Duchess, while you had the rest of your children while King or Queen, thus making them Princes or Princesses.

So if you want to retain most of your royal fortune and ensure that you remain in power across multiple generations, you’ll want to edit your Will and Testament so that your eldest — who will be, once again, next in line to the throne as long as they have a royal title and weren’t born out of wedlock — gets all the money.

In relation to the above, a King or Queen/Emperor or Empress’ siblings cannot take over after they die — this should be expected, as you cannot take over laterally (i.e. from sibling to sibling) when the previous generation Bitizen dies.

As for situations where you get stripped of your title following a revolution, that’s pretty much it as far as being in control of your country is concerned. You and your spouse (if you have one) will lose your power and fortune, and while your children will retain their royal titles, we’ve found that they will not take over as ruler once you’ve been overthrown due to a revolt.

At the moment, there is no option to designate someone to take over for you as King/Queen/Emperor/Empress in the event of death or revolt, but we’re certainly hoping Candywriter adds such a feature in a future update, even if it’s a God Mode exclusive at the very least.

Royalty Odds And Ends

Aside from the options we mentioned under the Royalty sub-menu, there are other things that you can do as a royal that we’ve yet to discuss.

As you’ll notice in the Assets section, your home will always be your country’s equivalent to the real-world Buckingham Palace — it will come with dozens of bedrooms and bathrooms, and it will come with a Condition bar that will help you determine whether to renovate it or not. Renovations on a royal palace, of course, will cost much more than renovations on a commoner’s house, but you can also throw house parties as usual and, in most cases, use your royal influence to get the cops to back off if the neighbors complain. However, royal palaces can also be haunted — be prepared for a few random hauntings from stock NPC spirits, as well as those of Bitizens you may have controlled in the past!

When it comes to royal weddings, you can choose the venue for the ceremony like you could with a standard wedding, but you will also be asked how many guests you wish to invite — larger ceremonies seem to have a greater effect on your Respect.

Marrying a commoner will automatically give them a royal title based on their gender, and if you’re wondering whether you, as a commoner, could marry into a royal family, that is also possible thanks to the new BitLife update! You just might end up marrying a Prince or Princess (we’ve yet to see King or Queen or similar), and while there’s a small chance future generations will be able to take over as King or Queen at some point, you will, at the very least, have yourself a tidy fortune if you marry into royalty!

Lastly, there are two options under Royalty that we’ve yet to discuss — Abdicate and Honorific. Using Abdicate means you’re voluntarily resigning your throne, and that will also apply to your spouse as well as any children you may have. That means your entire immediate family will become commoners and all of you will need to get regular jobs in order to earn money going forward. That said, we can tell you right now that this won’t be a very popular decision with most spouses.

The Honorific feature simply allows you to choose how you wish to be addressed — do you want to be addressed as Your Majesty or Your Highness, or are you such a Game of Thrones fan that you want your royal Bitizen to be referred to as Your Grace? This is a mostly cosmetic feature that doesn’t do much to affect gameplay — except maybe determine what those annoying NPCs will call you if they decide to earn your wrath by using the wrong honorific.